Profile

Anne Massoni

Photography Program Director

Assistant Professor

MFA, Ohio University

BA, Connecticut College

Anne Leighton Massoni is the Photography Program Director at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Before joining UArts in 2013, she taught at Marshall University, Cornell University, Tyler School of Art, Washington College, Memphis College of Art and Monmouth University, designing new photo programs at MCA and Monmouth.

She received an MFA in Photography from Ohio University and BAs in Photography and Anthropology from Connecticut College. Her interests lie equally with appropriation of images already in the world and utilizing new technologies in her work. Her imagery addresses familial narratives and memories.

Massoni has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Print Center, Philadelphia; Newspace, Portland; East End Film Festival, London; and Il Cantinonearte Teatri, Montepulciano, Italy. Publications include ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art and The Photograph & The Album, published by MuseumsEtc.

She serves as the chair of Society for Photographic Education’s Mid Atlantic region.

ARTIST STATEMENT
The act of remembering is what currently drives Massoni’s work. To visually navigate the stories in her mind…to remember stories that may not exist, to imagine stories not yet told. She utilizes both created images and found imagery to present to the viewer this place between truth and fiction. The images themselves reinforce the concepts of memory and often use mnemonic elements and notions of artifact to represent an underlying story, which touches on the personal while still attempting the collective. The concept is rooted in the details presented… sometimes revealing and yet often holding secret. There is truth in her tales but not necessarily a truth of hers alone. There is a sense of shared ideas but uncertainty as to the origin of the authorship of those ideas. This place between revealing and holding secret is what she’s after… Massoni is interested in its intangibility. She is searching for that which we experience and cannot express…evidence of memory, evidence of experience, evidence of existence.

Each body of work, regardless of the disparity in appearance is motivated by the same underlying themes and ideas. With different approaches in medium and minor variances in concept Massoni is able to work with a consistent set of ideas over time. Whether she stages her images or appropriates and manipulates them, evidence of memory and the act of remembering consistently finds a place in her work.